Well hi there,
If you’ve been anywhere near the internet this week, you’ve heard the siren call: Dating Sunday. The biggest, horniest, most hopeful day of the year for dating apps.
According to the headlines, this is the moment. The day everyone logs back on, freshly exfoliated by the promise of a new year, ready to swipe with intention and optimism and maybe a little emotional amnesia.
And look — we’re not anti-hope. We love hope. We run on it.
But we are deeply suspicious of the idea that connection can be scheduled like a product launch.
Let’s get into it.
– Team Necterine
WHEN DATING STARTS TO LOOK LIKE WORK
That’s your cue to log off
Cosmo’s take on Dating Sunday frames it as a collective reset: people reactivating profiles, sending first messages, and finally “putting themselves out there.” Which sounds nice, in theory.
But zoom out for a second.
This week alone, we’ve seen headlines aboutbecause job applications are so broken. We’ve watched AI continue to colonize intimacy in ways that range from bleak to genuinely alarming. Dating platforms are optimizing, automating, and scripting human connection into something that increasingly resembles LinkedIn with thirst traps.
When dating starts to feel like:
a numbers game
a personal brand exercise
a cover letter for your personality
That’s not romance. That’s admin.
And no amount of “Dating Sunday energy” fixes a system that confuses volume for meaning.
OUR UNPOPULAR OPINION
The apps aren’t where January magic happens
January doesn’t need more swiping. It needs participation.
Not in the sense of “try harder,” but in the sense of re-entering your actual life.
Because real connection doesn’t happen when everyone’s performing optimism at the same time. It happens sideways. Unexpectedly. When you’re relaxed enough to be present.
Instead of logging on to the apps this weekend, what if you:
went somewhere new with friends and talked to strangers without an agenda
hosted a low-stakes dinner and told everyone to bring someone single (no icebreakers, no pressure, no pitches)
joined a class, a supper club, a volunteer shift, a thing you’d normally talk yourself out of
said yes to being seen, without needing it to turn into anything
The goal isn’t to meet “the one.”
It’s to feel like a person again.
Connection thrives when it’s not auditioning.
SPONSORED AND VERY ON PURPOSE
High Standards? Good. A Date With Poco Never Disappoints.
If modern dating is going to be unreliable, inconsistent, and occasionally unhinged, then your pleasure doesn’t have to be.
Between ghosts, breadcrumbers, and people who swear they’re “just bad at texting,” you deserve one thing that shows up exactly as promised.
Poco is an award-winning G-spot vibrator designed with bendability that actually understands anatomy — think: a motorized finger that never gets tired, never overthinks, and never disappears mid-connection.
No mixed signals.
No emotional labor.
No wondering what that meant.
Just:
2 powerful motors
16 intensities
customizable vibe patterns
showerproof design
smart app capability
It’s grounding. It’s consistent. It’s pleasure without performance.
Honestly? It’s the only situationship we actively endorse.
And right now: 30% off, plus an extra 20% with code S4VE20.
Post-Dating Sunday check-in:
THE REAL RESET
January isn’t about reinvention, it’s about re-entry
Dating Sunday wants you to believe that the answer is more effort in the same broken systems. More swiping. More messaging. More emotional output with diminishing returns.
We disagree.
The better question isn’t “How do I get more matches?”
It’s “How do I want to feel in my life?”
Start there.
Follow what feels enlivening, not extractive.
Let connection be a byproduct of being engaged, not a KPI.
Dating doesn’t need a designated day.
It needs you in the world.
We’re rooting for you — off the apps, on your terms.
xoxo,
Team Necterine
Know anyone who could use this newsletter? Let them know they can sign up here.
Dating sucks, but it doesn’t have to.
Necterine is a next-generation connection app to help you cultivate relationships.
Our mission is to redefine connection by celebrating every interaction. We provide tools and experiences that empower our users to discover themselves through the spectrum of relationships, from fleeting encounters to lifelong partnerships.
